Mars-Mercury Quincunx

Hephaestus at the Foot of the Black Mountain

Hephaestus, god of blacksmiths, metalworkers, and fire

I have recently become enamored of the image of Hephaestus as a mythological bearer of Mars imagery (a concept which can be accredited to my teacher, Austin Coppock). Hephaestus, god of metallurgy, craftspeople, and fire, was child of Hera- born disfigured, Hephaestus was rejected by his mother who thrust him from Mount Olympus into the sea. He was later rescued by sea goddesses and went on to hone his technical skills in a forge said to have been built under Mount Aetna (every volcanic eruption of the mount was rumored to be Hephaestus working in his forge.) In contrast to the significations of external individuation by violent separation/pillaging and force as brought forth by Ares (the deity commonly associated with Mars), Hephaestus shows us a side of Mars that uses time to its advantage- a Mars whose separation is not severance by weapon or blade, but a separation with much more intrapersonal implications: the separation of oneself to perfect the art of craft in isolation, sealed in a fiery chamber where heat and time and force of impact are given the proper amount of attention to create the perfect tool. Hephaestus as a martial figure delivers us a type of Mars whose heat does not automatically render our material combust, but melts down the raw metal so that we may mold it, cool it, and grind it sharp. I have felt recently that Hephaestus, in all of his solitary glory with a mountain sitting on top of him, serves as a beautiful allegory for the current state of our recently stationed Mars- a Mars that taking its time to reorient itself from its retrograde period at 8 degrees Gemini, appearing from our vantage point here on earth to be stock still in the sky. A Hephaestian Mars is one that necessarily reminds us to have patience, one who does not burst forth with the energy of fiery passion but with the energy of steady heat and thoughtful labor, knowing full well how important it is that the tools we choose must be of the right caliber to properly and effectively carry out whatever task is at hand.

Throughout our recent coalescing Mercury-Mars retrograde transits, I have been listening to a lecture series by James Hillman on Alchemical Psychology, as informed by Jung’s Collected Works. Hillman takes the listener through the prima materia of the alchemical process: the primary material, the stuff with which one begins the transformation- that which is present at the beginning of the work, be it lead, ash, pitch, or the virgin's milk, just to name a few. Of course, as Hillman takes care to point out several times over the course of the lecture, the process being referred to is not a literal one, and there are several points of entry and/or prima materia with which one can enter the psychic alchemical laboratory. Two of the prima materia Hillman lists off stood out to me as I listened: the massa confusa, or confused mass, a state of almost primordial chaos consisting of various unfertilized seeds of ideas all commingling in a battle for the attention of the ego (which cannot decide where to focus its attention and therefore chooses nothing), and the so-called "black mountain" that arises from this confused mass; a blockage of massive proportions standing directly in the ego's path as a result of sheer overwhelm, an allegory for that state of absolute inertia when you feel you must address one million things at once and therefore cannot really bring yourself do anything about anything.

With Mercury and Mars in a standoff at 8 degrees Capricorn and 8 degrees Gemini respectively (a retrograde Mercury ruling over the domain of Mars's transit, but being that the two planets are quincunx or inconjunct, the two bodies cannot "see" each other) these two interconnected forms of prima materia may be at the forefront of our process. In my imagining, the confused mass is the place where Hermes plays his tricks, the domain of Mercury: all ideas and no follow through. The black mountain- in the case of extending the metaphor to fit our current astrological weather- being the geological mass under which Hephaestus's martian forge sits. The medicine Hillman loosely suggests for the transformation of the black mountain is to break it apart, destroying it piece by piece. Following this logic, perhaps we can imagine Hephaestus the blacksmith in his forge, creating the weapon necessary to chip away at the mountain that looms above from the inside out, knowing that it is not the force with which we hack away at the stone, but the strength of the tool and the steady heat of our endurance that allows us to break the mountain down into palatable pieces so that we may make it to the other side. In terms of working with the massa confusa, Hillman claims that the way through is to let the seed which wants to blossom choose to come to life on its own, and in doing so sacrificing the others; this, as opposed to the ego attempting to pick and choose or, even worse, fertilize every seed which claims to wish to grow in an act of fateful cardinality wherein all of the blooms immediately lose their nutrients. 

Hillman also makes an apt cautionary statement: neither this black mountain nor this mass of confusion are forms of matter that can be hacked through mindlessly with a hero's mighty sword. One must patiently move through an initiatory phase of surrender under the pressure of lowly, earthly darkness in order for the matter to transform, sweating out the sickness in the great forge of matter not yet animated. Ultimately, this rings uncannily true of our current process: We see Saturn in the 3rd decan of Aquarius (24 degrees) as our dispositor (the planet ruling the sign in which a planet is located) of a retrograde Capricorn Mercury, which is currently ruling Mars's extended stay in Gemini. The 3rd Decan of Aquarius, coined in Austin Coppock's 36 Faces as "The Knot," conjures an image of the Gordian knot, an unsolvable puzzle discovered in Gordium by Alexander the Great- a puzzle consisting of an elaborately tied knot, which promised to grant rulership of the entire continent of what is now Asia to whomever could untie it. Alexander, in his greedy hubris, sliced the knot with his sword, choosing to take the easy way out. Obviously, Alexander did not conquer the entirety of Asia, and anyone who has ever read any sort of fable or parable can grasp the moral of this story. Again: the matter of the black mountain and the massa confusa cannot be hacked through mindlessly with a hero's mighty sword. 

The challenge of knowing when and how to use, move, and direct our energy- and, in loose alchemical terms, what uses of energy will cause a small combustion at the wrong temperature, forcing us to start the process all over again- is paramount here. The challenge specifically delivered to us by Saturn the 3rd decan of Aquarius is to know when to use force to solve the problem or come to our desired solution, whether we are wading through a baffling sea of untapped options or climbing a seemingly insurmountable land mass which blocks our view of the horizon. The challenge is not to see how quickly we can move forward, but to stay with the darkness- the alchemical nigredo. It is to wait for the metal to melt, to continue hammering though our wrist may be tired, to trust that the chaos of the stewing amalgam of micro bacteria at the foot of the ancient mountain will evolve into a greater living organism that can crawl up onto land if only given time. This is especially important at a time when passion (Mars) and thought/concept (Mercury) are out of each other's lines of sight.

At a certain point in his Alchemical lectures, Hillman makes reference to an idea that our dark, pungent, difficult, toxic emotions will poison themselves with their own fumes if given long enough to do so. They cannot be severed from our psyche with a hero's mighty sword, they cannot be torched off with the quickness of fire; they cannot be polished to brightness, therefore turning brightness itself into a punishment for having "bad" feelings. Sometimes must stay with the darkness, with the confusion, deep in our forge at the core of the earth- chipping away at the mountain with the measured force of presence until we tire of seeing it as a towering, immovable mass and begin to think of it as only a pile of stones.